New Song Finally Finished! (Almost)

Started recording "Call On Me" back in December of 2012. I'm finally at the point (I believe so anyway) that I just have to mix and master the song now. I am considering re-recording a couple of guitar parts that feature the Leslie speaker sound. I'm not 100% sure if I will but it's pretty minor stuff regardless. So here is the mix/master I came up with as of last night:





I'm actually pretty happy with the sound. Everything can be clearly heard. Drums sound pretty good. I am however planning to move the background vocals during the choruses to either side instead of in the middle as they are in this version. And I may give the electric bass a little boost in volume.

For anyone who may be interested, I played an Epiphone Les Paul for all the electric guitar parts through a Fender Super Sonic stack, a Fender J-bass and a Yamaha S90 for the Rhodes sound.

My inspiration for this song was actually The Bee Gees. I was going through a time where I was listening to their early songs and checking out all their late 60's and early 70's videos on YouTube. I was just messing around on guitar and trying to come up with a melody over the guitar chords and some of the words just started flowing out. After I had the main theme of the song I started writing the lyrics to match. And then I spent way too long on recording it. Truth is I abandoned it for a long, long time and didn't finish it up. I had spent a lot of time on (Doesn't That) Blow Your Mind and you might say I was creatively exhausted. Excuses, excuses. I pretty much blew off 2013 but in all honesty I did some a pretty good reason. As I look through my recording log book--which I'm not very consistent with keeping up to date--I see that all of 2013 is blank except for nearly the very last month, which is when I managed to cut those 2 Christmas recordings. So it wasn't a complete waste. Pending all things possible, I promise myself to make 2014 a much more productive year. I Already have this song done. "Already". LOL. Album will be on the way as soon as I finish up recording one last song and go back and remix some of the others.

But for now I want to enjoy all the work I put into "Call On Me." If anyone should happen to give it a listen (Bootsy) I hope it sounds like music to your ears. I'll be back in the studio tonight tweaking and making adjustments.

A Christmas Single

I like the 'old' practice of releasing singles with A sides and B sides and the special artwork that was featured on the covers. Not all singles had such artwork. Some just came in plain white sleeves or such. But some releases--such as the Beatles' singles--had unique artwork/photographs on the sleeves.

That was a pretty cool practice but who releases singles anymore? I know they used to release cd singles before but those things usually featured 4 to 6 songs on them and were aptly called 'maxi-singles' or something to that effect. And most of the songs were always different versions or mixes of the same one song. The radio version would be on there along with a remix by "DJ Kool" and another remix by "DJ Badass" among others. Pretty superfluous in my opinion. I realize a cd can hold about 80 minutes worth of music and it may be considered a waste to only have 2 songs on there. But then at least have a few other songs that the artist/band worked on themselves instead of the outsourced-to-dj versions.

The neat thing about the Beatles' singles was that all the ones they ever released were not part of any albums. So you had to buy both the singles and albums if you wanted to have all their music. Their reasoning was that they didn't want to sell the fans the same music twice. But I can only imagine how much better the already great "Revolver" album would have been with the "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" single on there!

Anyway my whole point in mentioning all this is that since I recorded 2 songs for this past Christmas it could be considered a single and I made a cover design for it. That is, were I to officially release it. Perhaps I actually will for Christmas 2014 in the early part of November. Well here is the official cover art for it:

There it is. I wish all the readers of this blog a most blessed and prosperous new year. And stay tuned for more music and updates!

Full Length Album Coming This Fall!!

I decided that I would release a full length album before the year is up. It's already mid to late September so that does not allow me much time. Especially since I plan on going back and remixing some of my existing songs. That shouldn't take an excessive amount of time as long as I dedicate enough hours to the task. Ideally I want it released no later than November. I already released a 6-song EP in late 2011 but it was a hurried effort and I ended up including an incorrect mix of one of the songs. Additionally, I created the EP without cover artwork so Record Union--the company I submitted the album with--used their own stock photo of a red dog. At the time it didn't matter because I just wanted my best music out there on Amazon and iTunes and Spotify. But this time around I will make sure to provide my own album artwork and the correct versions of my songs.

The reason I've waited so long to do this is due to the nature of my music. It's basically all over the place genre-wise. I have songs that sound pop, rock, jazz, r&b, indie, retro and some that are instrumental in different styles. The songs I ultimately end up including on this full-length album will in no way create a cohesive or thematic listening experience. It will be more like a compilation of an artist who has spent different phases of his career indulging in various styles of music. Perhaps someone like Beck. Or David Bowie. Or Brian Eno. Not sure. But I'm going to do this. And this album will include the best of what I've created between 2001 and 2012 and perhaps even a little something from 2013. I imagine my second full-length album will be more cohesive musically and will be comprised of material recorded over a much shorter period of time.

One of the songs that will be on this album is titled, "Where I Belong," and I just yesterday uploaded it to YouTube. Here it is:

By the way, the photo that accompanies the song in the video will most likely be the album artwork for this upcoming release. I think it looks cool. But getting back to this song--it's a song I recorded in 2007 so it's pretty old relatively speaking. The song opens with some low organ notes and and electric guitar. I was going for a dark feel there. The rest of the song features 6 and 12-string acoustic guitars, 2 electric guitars, electric bass and drums. This song also has the distinction of being the very first where I sang falsetto on. Falsetto is something I've been using a lot more since this song and will continue to do so. I really enjoy falsetto in the modern vein of Chris Martin of Coldplay and James Vincent McMorrow to mention a few.

This song may have a bit of a country feel to it. Maybe alt-country to be more precise. But that's really not the sound I was going for. I was going for a combination of an alternative and power pop and hard rock sound and I think I succeeded in that mission.

I feel the drums came out well-recorded in this song. Not 100% content with it but one of the better recordings I've managed. And as you know, I judge many of my recordings by the quality of the drum set sound. At this time I have no plans to re-work this song in any way for the album release to come. I'm going to leave it with its raw feel and energy. I must also confess that it is not one of my favourite tunes but it does have its moments of what in my world I would call 'perfection,' including that little guitar solo after the first chorus. It is a simple part but the tone of the guitar combined with the notes played over the other layers of instruments is really in my opinion one of my greatest musical moments.

I will try to get more tunes uploaded to my YouTube channel and as I do that I will share them here. Also I will continue to update on my progress of the album release and perhaps even schedule an album release party  :}